Many vehicles use internal combustion engines to operate, whether the engines are piston, rotary or turbine engines. These vehicles include automobiles, trucks, trains, airplanes, ships and boats. All of these vehicles require highly combustible fuel in the form of gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil, petroleum products or other combustible fuels, and those fuels present a safety hazard. The fuel is often contained in a fuel tank which contains a large amount of air as the tank empties. Evaporation of the fuel into the fuel tank ullage presents a large air to fuel ratio that enhances the possibility of combustion.
These engines and fuels are also used with stationary facilities such as power generation plants, petroleum refineries, co-generation facilities and manufacturing plants that use petroleum based fuels to activate equipment or produce flammable fluids. For these stationary facilities, the use of the flammable fuels also presents a safety hazard. Additionally, the storage of fuel for these facilities presents a large concern because the storage tanks containing flammable liquid are often large and as the tank empties a large volume of fuel evaporates into the larger ullage of the storage tank presenting the likelihood of a more powerful explosion if the fuel in the tank is ignited.
There is thus a need for a method and apparatus to reduce the risk of igniting the fuel in the fuel storage tanks, and to do so economically.